Government to relax immigration rules for NHS doctors and nurses

The government will relax immigration rules to allow more non-EU skilled workers into the UK, ending the hard limit introduced by Theresa May while she was home secretary.

On Friday, Sajid Javid is expected to announce a change in policy to exempt doctors and nurses from the visa cap on skilled workers of 20,700 per year in order to alleviate the unsder-staffing issues currently facing the NHS. The exemption of healthcare employees from the cap will allow businesses to recruit an extra 8,000 skilled migrants each year from professions such as IT, engineering, and teaching, effectively increasing the cap by 40 per cent.

Previously, NHS bosses had complained that the stringent immigration rules was preventing them recruiting a sufficient number of doctors and nurses into the NHS. The decision to leave the European Union has made the situation worse over the last two years, especially with the government refusing to guarantee the rights of EU nationals living and working in the UK after March 2019.

Anti-migration campaigner Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch has called on the government to train sufficient doctors and nurses in the UK for fill demand and not “raid other countries that need doctors and nurses a great deal more than we do”.